BLM to cite illegal landfill

Art Nadler

Monday, Dec. 14, 1998 | 11:06 a.m.

The federal Bureau of Land Management plans to issue a citation this week to a yet-to-be-named violator who illegally buried municipal trash next to the Sunrise Mountain landfill.

Mike Dwyer, manager of the BLM Las Vegas field office, said the 400-acre area has been graded over and is accessible only by passing through the 720-acre Sunrise Mountain landfill.

The BLM owns the Sunrise Mountain landfill and leased it to Clark County for a municipal dump in 1962. Republic-Silver State Disposal Services Corp. operated the facility under an exclusive franchise agreement with Clark County until the dump was shut down in 1993. Silver State and the county hold the lease on the property until 2001.

Dwyer said the BLM could either fine the illegal landfill violator for trespassing, or order someone to clean up the site. He would not confirm whether Silver State would be fined, but said it would have been difficult to reach the adjacent landfill without passing through the larger dump.

Robert Grosbeck, general counsel for Republic-Silver State, said his company was the one that informed the BLM of the adjacent landfill after noticing trash following the heavy rains in September.

"I don't know that Silver State was involved," Groesbeck said of the small landfill. "Certainly Republic-Silver State (the newly merged corporation) was not involved. It's our understanding that there were people (the general public) dumping there in the 1940s and '50s."

Groesbeck said the BLM had not informed Silver State about being served with a citation, or getting involved in a cleanup. He said the company is concentrating on working on drainage in the main Sunrise Mountain landfill.

Dwyer said there was no immediate danger to the public, but some waste from the smaller landfill washed downhill into the Las Vegas Wash following severe flooding in September. During that time, buried trash from the larger landfill also was unearthed and could have washed into Clark County's drinking water supply.

"This is historical. We could spend years on who owns this landfill," said Randy Harness, national vice chairman of conservation for the Sierra Club in Nevada and California. "We'd rather just get over it and clean up the area."

Dwyer said the BLM began investigating the smaller landfill site seven months ago at the request of the Clark County Health District.

"There is a potential for seepage into the ground water," Dwyer said. "We want to know what is in the site, the air quality around it and the integrity of the cap" that was installed to close the landfill.

An air quality problem arose in 1996, when a 100-foot crack was detected in the cap of the larger landfill. The BLM hired consultants to examine it and found that explosive levels of methane and hydrogen were escaping.

The Sunrise Mountain area is known to have several fissures and faults within it. During heavy rainstorms, springs rise within the mountain and sometimes carry pollutants into surrounding ground water. Studies also have shown that earthquake fault lines pass through the middle of the larger landfill.